


baseball

by softestrichie



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, stan is richies first friend, they meet when theyre 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 03:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15088220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestrichie/pseuds/softestrichie
Summary: stanley needs a left fielder. richie needs a friend.





	baseball

As a little boy, Richie always hated gym class.

He’d never really thought highly of any of his classes, in all fairness. Not math, or any of the sciences. Not English or French. Richie didn’t even like playtime; he felt miles away from it all. School wasn’t for children like him. 

See, Richie didn’t think he was much like any of the other little boys at this particular school. Or even the older boys he’d see looming around the back of the arcade, smoking funny cigarettes. Not like his father, or his granddad, or the uncle who only appeared on his birthday. Nobody on this planet.

Perhaps he was from a different one. Alien.

Actually seemed feasible back then, when he was small. He could remember seeing one for the very first time. His mother had been hounding his dad all week about ‘quality time’, which had finally come in the form of a sci-fi horror on the Saturday night. It only took one look at those great, green antagonists to make Richie’s tummy hurt. 

“You can either get upset about it,” Richie’s dad had told him, during one very awkward bedside talk. “Or you can stand tall. Say ‘I’m different’ with your head held high. What are you going to do, Rich?”

Richie could never answer.

The truth is, he had different ideas. Perhaps he didn’t have to be up there, floating around in space, all by himself. Perhaps he didn’t have to be lonely. Maybe all Richie needed was another alien. 

Which follows back to Richie’s least favourite place on the planet – gym class. Or rather, one particular gym class. A sticky one, when he was nine years old. The hour in which his prayers were finally, finally answered. 

It all started with a feather. The feather of a...

“Warbler.” 

Richie’s head whipped around like it might at a gunshot. This was a new voice, hadn’t heard it at school before. It was crisp and quiet. And it was talking to him. 

It had been a bright, muggy morning. He’d lay in the grass just next to the school for a good hour beforehand, listening to the leaves jitter and letting his restless feet kick. Quietly singing an eighties tune with naughty lyrics. 

It had been nice. He’d felt good. 

That was, until the bell rang. And he’d gone off to the locker rooms. And it had all dribbled down the drain again. Back to planet earth.

“What?”

“Warbler. Like the bird.” 

The boy whose voice it had been was looking at Richie quizzically from his spot on the far end of the bench. One of the last ones left in there. Browny-blonde curls in a garland around his head and one, thin eyebrow raised. Something hard in his face. 

Before Richie knew what was happening, the boy was leaning towards him, arm outstretched like an aunt about to pinch his cheeks. He made to shrink back, stumbling slightly on his ever-clumsy feet, but it was too late. The boy’s eyes narrowed as he drew his arm back, a small, yellow feather in his hand.

“It was in your hair. Behind your ear.” The boy moved again to point at the particularly tight ringlet it had just been plucked out of. 

“Holy - is that a magic trick?” He stretched out a hand to touch the feather, but, oddly, the boy drew it back. Popped it in the front pouch of his satchel and sealed it with a snap. 

“No, it was sticking out of your hair.”

“How d’you know it’s from a wor-buh-lur?” Richie asked, trying to keep his voice even. 

The boy raised both of his eyebrows, twitching his lips left to right as he thought about it. Looked like he was scouring a library book in his head - Richie could almost see the pages flipping by.

“It’s the colour of egg yolk, and it’s got little red parts - undertones. Warblers are common round here.” 

Richie was about to quiz him further, and ask how he’d known that. Maybe even ask his name, what his favourite colour was, something else humiliating. But that was precisely the moment the coach came in, and shouted at them both to hurry up. 

The end, he thought. 

It had all gone well and truly back to normal by the time the lesson had started. Richie was doing his usual funny little bounce on the spot, swinging his hands back and forth by his sides. Ready for some great brute to start calling names and inevitably exclude him. 

Nobody ever wanted Richie on their team, for any of the sports. 

“I’ll have Peter.”

In today’s case, baseball. The sunny, funny, father-and-son classic. 

“Edward C.”

Everyone’s favourite.

“That kid – what’s his name?”

Everyone, minus –

“Richie.”

He looked up, tummy going cold and ears starting to whir. Who on earth had put him on their team? Had to be a new kid, one that didn’t know the ropes. Or an absolute maniac. Or, maybe – just maybe – somebody who wanted to be his friend. 

The voice, as it had just half an hour ago, came from the boy he met in the locker room. Bird boy, with his narrow eyes and cocked head. White ankle socks and top button sealed. He was picking today. And he’d picked Richie. 

A miracle. A first. 

The game had been, as expected, a shambles. He hadn’t hit or caught a single ball yet, but the bird boy didn’t really seem to mind. Had just given him a straight-faced nod, and said something quiet like “well done, Richie,” or “good effort, Richie.”

("You suck, beaver!" said the other kids.) 

Richie tapped him on the arm heavily when they were packing away for the playtime bell. “Hey, you.”

The boy tilted his head over his shoulder, looking very much like one of his birds for a moment. He came across a bit warmer now, after running around and laughing a bit. Something soft in the set of his jaw. “My name is Stanley. Hello.” 

Stanley. Nice.

“My name is Richie,” he replied, without really thinking. “Why did you put me on your team?”

Stanley blinked, slinging a sack of baseball bats over his shoulder and swaying slightly under its weight. The knots in his face made it seem like a funny question. As though everybody in their class wasn’t whispering about it all lesson. “Because I needed another player. If I hadn’t, there’d be no left fielder.”

Richie snorted slightly, regretting it when he saw the boy flinch. “Obviously. But why me? I suck at all the positions.” 

Stanley looked at his feet as he started to walk, and then Richie’s dirtier ones, considering this. “Well, I guess...it wouldn’t have been nice if you got left out.”

Richie walked alongside him. He felt a little bit light-headed, for a moment. Stan was kind to do that. 

Wouldn’t really grasp the significance of it until he was older, but one message was clear: maybe Stanley really did want to be his friend. 

“Oh...” he breathed. “Thank you, Stanley.”

So it turned out, Stanley did the very same thing next lesson. 

And the next. 

And the one after that too. Richie would keep failing, and fumbling, and missing. All the others boys would sneer until they were blue in the face. Yet he’d still have pride of place on Stanley Uris’ dream team, every single time.

Naturally, they started to talk in their lessons. And eat their sandwiches together at lunchtime, to talk a bit more. Then round each other’s house to keep talking over dinner, or a video game.

Stanley became Stan, Richie became Rich, and I became we. That’s when Richie knew it. That he didn’t have to be alone anymore, and he never would again.

He’d found his other alien. His very first best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> dedicating this to my lovely and very close friend, lois (starboystan), for helping me with this and being the real life stanny to my richie.


End file.
